| Editorials_
Rally against the war
On the following page is a scene that
Americans have ignored too long—the
continuing U.S. air war in Indochina.
In his three years of winding down the
A-ar, President Nixon has dropped more tons
of bombs than President Johnson dropped
luring his five years in office. Nixon’s ad
ministration has dropped some three million
tons of bombs in that part of the world we’ve
all tried to forget.
The effects of that bombing have been
■quite devastating. We’ve killed and maimed
[many innocent people. We’ve destroyed the
■land. By one estimate there are now more
Ithan 20 million bomb craters in Indochina.
(And now that bombing has been escalated.
The war, quite obviously, is not over.
But what can you do about it?
First of all, you can participate in
Saturday’s march and rally against the war.
I Nixon must be shown that the American
[people don’t want to “wind down” the war
|any longer, that they want to end it—now.
The march is a first step in that direc
jtion. The march will leave the EMU at 11
la.m. and walk to a rally on the Mall which
will begin at noon.
And the beginnings of some second steps
will be available at the rally.
fables will be available with information
about where to go from here. There will also
be canvassing against the war.
But perhaps most important—as far as
further steps to take—will be the table where
persons who haven’t registered can sign up in
time to be eligible to vote in the May
primary.
We must make the war an issue in the
primary, but we won’t be successful unless
people are registered to vote in that election.
Register to vote
This spring’s Oregon primary will be
very important.
But only if you register and are able to
vote.
The 18 year-old vote will be meaningless
if the nation’s young people don’t register
and participate in elections. In Oregon, this
means you have to register by Saturday in
order to vote in the primaries.
You also must be registered in either the
Democratic or Republican parties in order to
vote in either of those parties respective
primaries. It’s well and good to proclaim
your voting independence, but in the
primaries you only hurt yourself, depriving
yourself of the ability to provide input during
the election.
There are several places you can
register to be able to vote in the May
primaries. In Eugene, you can register at the
Lane County Courthouse, U.S. National
Banks and local fire stations. Some of these
places will not be open Saturday, but a voter
registration table will be provided at
Saturday’s anti-war march to enable persons
to register on the last day possible.
You must take advantage of your right to
vote in this all-important election year.
But to vote, you must be registered.
Letters
>
4
Strike
In response to the escalation of war
crimes in Southeast Asia, the NSA and
Student Union Against the War have called
for a nationwide student strike on Friday,
April 21. Pressure must be brought to bear
on the U.S. Government to recognize the
evil and stupidity of its monstrous war
policy.
No effort is too small. As students, we
can help by demonstrating the solid op
position of the college community. For one
day, students across the country will cease
functioning as students, to dramatize the
disruption of life at every level,
everywhere, caused by the war.
This will not be a holiday. Students are
urged to spend the day helping with and
participating in the various anti-war ac
tivities. There is plenty to be done and it is
up to all of us to make sure that every
student is aware of the importance of not
going to classes Friday.
Dennis Bradford
Rich Levine
Protest
I protest.
The immediate activity that is following
the recent escalation of the war is an
important part of the news. But it is only a
part of the news. SUAW, for example,
is working on long term activities in
cluding an air war education program,
getting a sister city in North Vietnam,
raising the war issue in the elections,
working in the May 1-6 activities and in the
community coalition that is making
arrangements for the rally Saturday. The
Emerald story on our Tuesday work
meeting ignored every one of these ac
tivities even though they were discussed
most of the meeting. Such one sided
reporting is a disservice to students who
want to know where to put their effort into
longer term activities to end the war and
support the Indochinese peoples.
It also gives an unfair characterization
of those who are now working in these
longer term activities.
i also object to being misquoted in the
same article.
The increase in space allotted to articles
on the war is a welcomed sight.
I'm assuming you’re working on the
quality too
Dennis Gilbert
Remember you’re human
The following is from an editorial in the
April 9th Washington Post:
“In his three years in the White House,
Mr. Nixon has dropped more bombs by ton
in Indochina, some three million tons, than
Lyndon Johnson did in his five years. If
you count the 500-pounders and the white
phosphorus and the 7Vi ton
‘Cheeseburgers’ and all the rest, Mr.
Nixon has dropped more than one ton of
bombs per minute during every single
minute of his administration. He has
become—here’s a ‘first’ for you—the man
who has assembled and let loose more
devastation from the sky than anyone else
in the history of creation; all this, mind
you, while ‘winding down' the war.”
This is the man and heavy bombing is
the policy that we all support simply by
going about our everyday activities. I hope
professors can forget they are professors
and students forget they are students long
enough for us to remember we are also
human. It is imperative that everyone
participate in anti-war events in Eugene
this spring.
Rick Fitch
Grad., Interdisciplinary Studies
Stop the rape
We talk of preserving the environment in
Oregon while we allow our air and naval
power to devastate thousands of square
miles of land.
We talk of justice in Eugene while we
allow thousands of innocent men, women,
and children to be maimed by our
fragmentary and anti-personnel bombs.
We talk of peace while we allow flagrant
violations of international laws and
treaties by our unlawful attacks upon
foreign countries.
We must stop talking. We must act to
withdraw all funds allocated to US.
military involvement in Vietnam. If we do
not act now, we shall no longer be able to
talk with honor of justice or peace or
brotherhood
We must stop our rape of Vietnam.
Clayton H. Brant
| Commentary
An open letter
to the Anti-war movement
We are scattered at the moment, still
licking our wounds and thinking about the
clobbering we took last Spring. We are
isolated from one another, too, bitterness
remains over the factional disputes that
tore us apart a year ago. We still distrust
Nixon and want to do something to end the
War, and yet we distrust one another as
well. We were smashed last year,
nationally and locally, because the various
groups in the Anti-War Movement became
alienated from one another and did not co
operate. Divided we were easy to deal
with, especially when some of us became
adventurist (look who’s talking).
Provoking and confronting the police,
blocking intersections, building bonfires,
and roaming around the streets at night is
not the way to win the hearts and minds of
the American People. Confrontation
tactics have not shown the American
people that the Nixon Regime is lawless,
aggressive, and destructive. Fur
thermore, law enforcement agencies have
made it quite clear that they have the
power, the desire, and the public support
to literally get away with murder in
dealing with confrontation. Obviously, we
need a new strategy.
We must move the 1972 elections, and we
must bring pressure to bear on the Nixon
Regime. To do this requires that we em
phasize propaganda and mass education,
using direct action and civil disobedience
very carefully.
The American people do not know what
is going on in Vietnam. They have not been
educated by our chanting in the streets and
the fragmentary bits of information from
the media. To end the War we must move
among the American people and conduct
mass education We must speak to them,
not leaflet them We should spend less time
on the Mall and more time at church,
community, business, professional, labor
union and grange meetings. We have not
presented our evidence coherently and we
have not answered questions. We have
been too busy trying to close the ROTC
building and writing indignant letters to
Congressmen and colleagues.
We must raise the question of Vietnam—
calmly and cogently—at every op
portunity. The 1972 election gives us a good
forum. We must organize and participate
in debates and panels, arrange for
speaking engagements by Anti-War
speakers, local and national.
And we must stop shouting down op
ponents. If we are to win support from the
American people we must respect their
mores, and be careful about how and when
we offend their concepts of legitimacy and
decency. We are in no position to seize
power, and we should stop acting like we
are. We aren’t even fooling ourselves
anymore. We will lose any confrontation.
Tear gas, Mace, clubs newspaper and tv
portrays irrational hippies screaming and
throwing rocks we lose. Any direct action
or civil disobedience must be very
unambiguous. We must stop doing things
that can be interpreted as petty van
dalism. We must remember who we are
and what we are up against. Above all,
civil disobedience and direct action cannot
degenerate into mere scuffling with police.
We must adopt a position of militant non
violence, and not be tempted or provoked
to deviate from it We are trying to end the
War, we are not trying to get one up on the
police department. The Vietnam War is in
a potentially decisive phase (you can tell
that something is happening in Vietnam
whenever there is a moon mission), and
we are in a position to start, to sustain, and
to expand a political dialogue that could
affect the way it goes. We are not in a
position to disrupt American society and
force an end to the war. We must face this
fact We must end the War, not “by any
means necessary,” but by any means that
will succeed.
Tim Travis
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